Subject: [mg36975] RE: [mg36912] Mathematica stole my X so I had to kill it

From: "DrBob" <drbob at bigfoot.com>

Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 05:33:28 -0400 (EDT)

Reply-to: <drbob at bigfoot.com>

Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

That makes about twenty posts this week detailing nothing but problems
with Mathematica on Linux. The BEST thing we've heard was somebody's
opinion that it might be worthwhile to run a Kernel on Linux (but not
the FrontEnd).
That's more than enough bad news to talk me out of switching to Linux.
I had been really considering it.
Bobby
-----Original Message-----
From: Steven [mailto:hattons at speakeasy.net]
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
Subject: [mg36975] [mg36912] Mathematica stole my X so I had to kill it
I'm running Mathematica 4.1 on SuSE Linux 8.0 with the KDE 3.0.3 and
XFree86 4.0.2.
I was trying to run one of the Mathematica Book -> Graphics Gallery ->
Animations -> Rolling Square. I don't recall the exact sequence of
actions
I took. I believe I selected the cell with the square (the only cell in
the notebook) and from the menu, Cell -> Animate Selected Graphics.
This
resulted in a set of animation control buttons appearing in the bottom
frame of the window. I clicked on one of these buttons, but nothing
happened. I looke back in the menu and saw M-y as a keyboard shorcut to
run an animation. I tried that with no result. I clicked another
button
in graphics control set, and my X windows locked up. This included the
keyboard's ability to give me another display by using Ctl+Alt+F1. I
went
to another system and ssh-ed in and found Mathematica had over 50% of my
user
resources, and was climbing. The same was true for VM. I have a gig of
physical RAM. Once I killed Mathematica, my X came back to life.
I've had several bad experiences with Mathematica and X. I honestly
believe there
is/are bug(s) in the Linux implementation. I would very much like to
help
isolate and fix these. Have others had such problems?
STH